note to self:

Don’t start reading flickr comments and notes when you should be doing some catch-up work.

chilling out

This weekend, Seppo and I purposely decided not to have a big dinner, and just to chill out. Friday night, we had dinner at Zao’s then hung out at the book store for a while. I caved and bought

Saturday was a day of running errands, none of which actually got done in any sort of satisfacory manner. We went to LensCrafters, but I found out that they aren’t covered directly by VSP, so I decided against getting glasses there. Then we went to lunch at the Emeryville Public Market, then to Dansk in Berkeley to find some dishes. We didn’t find what we wanted there, so we just walked around a bit in the Fourth Street shopping district, popping into some more house/kitchenware stores, all to no avail. But it was a beautiful day and we had a good time walking around. We stopped by at the local Farmer’s Market and bought… nothing. Heh. We couldn’t break our trend.

We had dinner with Alan, Becky, and Joe at Samwon Barbeque House, then grabbed some ice cream at a place down the street from our house, then played Apples to Apples. They played a well-matched game, totally shutting me out for a good half the game. Heh. I suck at that game. You should see me play mini-golf. Getting back to Korean bbq, I think if I remember, I will write up a guide to getting good Korean food in the food blog.

I spent a bunch of time after the guests left picking through some old pics and uploading them to flickr, since the month changed, and flickr resets your upload limit on the first of every month. I’m still holding out on getting a pro account until it’s my birthday, so I can have a legit reason to spend money, since we are, after all, trying to be more frugal, and I’ve already bought a book and some clothes this month.

Today was a lazy day. We went to Merritt Bakery & Restaurant with Klay and had the usual waffle et al brunches. I highly recommend this place for waffles. Hmm, if I remember, I should blog a review of this place in the food blog too. Yeah, sure I will.

house shuffle

It looks like around the middle of May, there is going to be a house shuffle. One of our housemates is moving out (to what sounds like a really cool place near one of our favorite food joints, Geta), the other housemate is going to move downstairs to our current room, and we are going to move into two of the smaller bedrooms upstairs. Joe is going to move into the big bedroom upstairs as well.

It looks like Mobi enjoys the upstairs. We’ve always kept the door closed between the upstairs and the downstairs so that the dog wouldn’t bother the upstairs housemates, but after the shuffle, it looks like it’s going to be ok with everyone to let him go where he wants (except bedrooms). He seems to like the upstairs a lot because there is more sunlight, and the windows are lower so he can look outside without “standing”. I’ve been mindful of the fact that this means that more of the house will be susceptible to the dreaded dog-hair-over-everything syndrome, so I have been trying to make a conscious effort to sweep up little areas more often, so that I get into a habit of it.

It was kind of a bummer because I thought Seppo and I had been making quite a bit more of conscious effort into keeping the kitchen tidy when we use it nowadays, but it was made clear to us — albeit in a completely not unkind way — that the fruits of our labor were not noticeable. It’s always a bummer when you think you are making a difference for the better and really trying to change your habits to be more accomodating, only to find that all the effort really isn’t paying off. I hope it will be better when we move upstairs. It’s kind of weird because right now, I feel sort of like I’m not “in my space” when I go upstairs, so I try to get in, cook some food, and get out, so I often forget to go back to clean up right away, but I think once we are upstairs, and the upstairs/downstairs door remains open, this feeling will go away and we’ll be able to care for the spaces more naturally. This also extends to the rodent situation.

In the next few weeks, we’ll be compressing some of our stuff and really trying to make an effort to throw some things away and sell some stuff. I really like living upstairs. I love the view from the back windows and how lovely the backyard looks in the springtime. It’s just breathtaking at times. Also, I used to pay more attention to what was going on in the backyard when we lived upstairs. I put in a fair amount of time to container gardening, which I had discontinued in the time I have been living downstairs.

I think, overall, this will be a good move for everyone. Our housemate who is moving out was clearly unhappy with the situation, so I think it is good that she is going somewhere where she’ll be happy. Our other roommate will be happy to live in the finished downstairs, after a long while of living in a half-done room. I’ll be happy to be upstairs with the sunshine and easier access to public areas. I think Seppo will be happy for the same reasons too. I think our new housemate will be happy to get out from his house. Mobi will enjoy having the run of the house.